Author of ‘From Colored to Black’ to visit Maywood

Just because Black History Month is over doesn’t mean that black history ends. Case in point — Afriware Books, located inside Suite 503 within the Eisenhower Tower, 1701 S. 1st Ave. in Maywood.

The venerable Maywood bookstore will host Erin Goseer Mitchell, author of From Colored to Black: A Bittersweet Journey on Saturday, March 11, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Doors will open at 2:30 p.m.

According to Mitchell’s website, the book is the result of a 2014 writers’ workshop she attended that was held at National Louis University.

“One of the requirements for attending the workshop was to submit and present a page of work in progress,” Mitchell writes.

“Rick Kogan, a senior editor at the Chicago Tribune, was the facilitator of the session. When my turn came, I read a page from an account about my first year in Chicago after I left Fitzgerald, Georgia. The group found it compelling. Kogan was very encouraging and told me that he wanted more, that this was a part of Chicago history that he had never heard.

“With his comments and the prodding I had gotten from my readers, I began the arduous and often painful process of writing about my life in Chicago. The reminiscences that comprise this book are a result of that effort.”

Mitchell, who was born in Selma, Alabama and grew up in Fitzgerald, Georgia “one generation before the Civil Rights Movement began,” according to an Afriware promotional flyer, gives a detailed personal account of her life in the segregated South.

For more information on the event or on Afriware in general, call (708) 223-8081 or click here. For more information on Mitchell, visit her website by clicking here. VFP